Fresh off Alberta’s C-69 victory at the Supreme Court, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s inclined to go after Ottawa on the fairness of applying the carbon tax in all regions of the country after the federal Liberals’ unfair exemptions for home heating oil users in the Maritimes.However, Smith says she’s not inclined to follow her Saskatchewan counterpart Scott Moe in withholding carbon taxes for home heating this winter, in defiance of Ottawa’s carve out for Atlantic Canadians.That’s because she can’t, legally speaking. Unlike Saskatchewan, which owns its own power company, Alberta isn’t in a position to tell private power providers to stop collecting Ottawa’s carbon taxes and risk federal prosecution.That ship sailed when former premier Ralph Klein deregulated Alberta’s electricity market in 1996.However, she is prepared to appeal a prior Supreme Court ruling giving the Liberal government the authority to set a price on carbon on the grounds that it isn’t being applied equally — or fairly — across the country. .And just like Alberta’s win on C-69, she has a measure of confidence it could be successful based on Prime Minister Trudeau’s exemption for home heating oil over the vast majority of Albertans — and Saskatchewan residents — who heat their homes with cleaner burning natural gas.“If you're going to have a federal government asserting that they have to have this power, so everybody is treated equally — and they don't treat everyone equally — it seems to me that that's something we should go back to the court and ask them whether or not they want to reconsider whether this is an appropriate use of the federal power?” she said at a press conference in Edmonton on Monday.“So we have retained a law firm that helped us win C-69 and we'll be asking them in the coming days whether there is an appetite to be able to challenge it now with this new information.”.“I just wouldn't ask our private sector operators to be in a position where I'm asking them to be out of compliance with the law. I would just prefer for the federal government to do the right thing and give a reprieve across the board in all provinces all fuel types for the winter. And then our preference would be to get rid of the retail carbon tax altogether.”Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.In an attempt to fend off a looming electoral collapse among Maritime voters — who have been shielded from the financial impacts of the carbon tax even as it rose from $20 in 2019 to $65 this year — Prime Minister Trudeau now finds his signature climate policy in shambles.Not that a three-year reprieve would do Maritimers much good, when it’s scheduled to hit at least $110 in three years and $170 by 2035.“We now have a schedule that wasn't available at the time the Court made the decision, that's going up to $170 per tonne. We're already seeing pain at $65 per tonne. And we're seeing that the federal government isn't even living up to its own legislation which they went to court to argue why they should have the mandate to do it in the first place,” Smith continued.It comes as the head of Canadians for Affordable Energy (CAE) chided the premiers — including Smith and Moe — for being on board with the fed’s net-zero by 2050 in the first place. .“Too many politicians across Canada pretend that Net Zero is something achievable. It isn’t and all need to admit it.“Dan McTeague — Canadians for Affordable Energy.Although CAE President Dan McTeague applauds the growing number of premiers questioning the announcement on heating oil relief, he encourages them to “dig deeper” on the deepening policy disaster: “Too many politicians across Canada pretend that Net Zero is something achievable. It isn’t and all need to admit it. The fact that the Trudeau Government is trying to patch over its policy framework with regional handouts demonstrates there is a bigger problem. This isn’t just about pretending to help some voters pay for one carbon tax — the whole framework is fundamentally flawed."
